


The Regent-Guardian

by Penguin



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-06-12
Updated: 2010-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-10 02:21:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penguin/pseuds/Penguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a wet evening some ten years after the <i>Tinker, Tailor</i> operation, Jim Prideaux unexpectedly runs into Bill Roach in London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Toft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toft/gifts).



> WARNING - will contain major spoilers for the book!

_That same term, Jim invented a nickname for Roach. He dropped Bill and called him Jumbo instead. He gave no reason for this and Roach, as is common in the case of christenings, was in no position to object. In return, Roach appointed himself Jim's guardian; a regent-guardian, was how he thought of the appointment; a stand-in replacing Jim's departed friend, whoever that friend might be._  
John Le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

 

\---

 

The place didn't know what it wanted to be. Anyone would have hesitated to call it a restaurant, and it was neither a pub nor a bar. Red and white chequered cloths pretended to be French bistro and the wine glasses played along, but the tumblers wanted to slide down a dark, polished wood counter with brass details, American style. The food, if one wanted to be kind, was an eclectic mix of central European and all corners of the British Empire.

The vodka came with clinking ice and a completely unnecessary twist of lime, but the glass felt good in his hand, heavy and cold.

Out of old, old habit, Jim had placed himself in a corner near the door, from where he could view the entire room. It began to dawn on him why he'd chosen this place for a drink: it was similar to himself. Motley parentage, patchy history, many languages; everything at once until it equalled nothing at all. And it had been a while since _he'd_ known what he wanted to be.

The only thing he'd ever done whole-heartedly and followed through to conclusion was too painful to dwell on. Both the thing, and that fact.

Jim drained his glass and thought, not for the first time, how very old he was. Much older than his years, carrying the history of Europe on his scarred back.

When he started on his second vodka on the rocks someone who wasn't the waiter approached the table. Always wary but never showing it, Jim looked up, carefully arranging his face into a non-committal, mildly questioning look.

"Sir…?" the young man said on an upward note.

He was tall and nervous and wore glasses, a well-cut suit and leather shoes that spoke quietly of money. His hair tumbled into his eyes.

"Mr Prideaux…?"

Jim made a sound at hearing his own name, a small grunt-like thing that could mean anything, while his mind processed the young man's features. Good, clear skin, long British nose, greenish brown eyes behind the glasses, dark hair flopping softly over his forehead. Jim's brain refused to supply a name.

The young man offered it. "Bill Roach, sir, from Thursgood."

"Ah, yes." Of course it was, although Jim tried and failed to reconcile this slim, sleek youth with the chubby boy from the bad old Thursgood days. "Jumbo. Should've known."

Just what he needed. Ghosts from the past.

"Yes, sir." The sensitive face softened in a smile, pleased that Jim remembered.

There was nothing for it but to be polite. "Sit, Jumbo." Jim gestured towards the vacant chair. "You were transferred from Thursgood. Best thing ever to happen to you?"

"I wouldn't say that, sir. The next place wasn't much better. I missed... things."

Jim noticed the pause and ignored it. "Not the food, I'm sure."

"Perhaps not the food," Roach agreed with a smile and asked the hovering waiter for whatever Jim was drinking.

"Old enough to drink vodka in bars, eh," said Jim gruffly. "Shows how old _I_ must be."

"You look exactly the same, sir." The boy's voice was warm, as though he really meant what he said.

"Leave the "sir" out, would you, Jumbo? I'm not your teacher any more."

Roach blushed an unbecoming scarlet. "What… what should I call you?"

He swallowed the "sir" but it hung unspoken in the air. Jim's smile was reluctant.

"Jim'll do."

Roach tried but couldn't get it across his lips. The arrival of the vodka saved him. Jim raised his glass in a salute.

"To our escape from Thursgood."

Roach laughed and Jim wondered how long it had been since he'd heard a laugh like that. It was like having a window thrown open in a stuffy room.

***

When they stepped out of the bar it was raining, but people were huddled around the tables on the pavement under the jut of the roof, smoking, talking loudly. Voices mingled with traffic and distant sirens, lights were reflected in the wet street. Jim was wonderfully drunk, but sober enough to note that Roach had been careful with his liquor. Highly uncharacteristic for a youth just down from Oxford, he thought before recalling something about Roach's mother loving her gin.

"Where are you staying?" asked Roach.

The "sir" continued to hang in the air after each sentence. Jim mentioned his hotel that was just round the corner, lost balance and reached out for a lamp post, missing it narrowly. Roach caught him.

"I have you," he breathed, and held on to Jim all the way to the hotel.

It did occur to Jim to protest, but this was a night of weakness and it felt good to be in someone's hands.

When they'd reached the hotel room, the effect of that last vodka hit home. The floor was a heaving sea, the ceiling spun, Jim fell on the bed like timber.

"Sir," said Roach somewhere behind him. "I'll stay. You can sleep."

Jim vaguely recalled mentioning insomnia across the faux-French tablecloth. There was something about Roach, some deep, undefined honesty, that put Jim off his guard. _God, look at me,_ he thought, _lying here with my back to the boy._ Inexplicable, inexcusable behaviour.

Roach's hand was on his arm. "You're safe. I'm here."

At the image of Bill Roach, Protector Against Evil, Jim let out a great bark of a laugh. There was a moment of surprised and possibly hurt silence before the boy kicked off his shoes and settled in the armchair.

_Bloody dangerous_, Jim thought in a blur before sleep took him.

***

When he woke up with fur on his tongue and a clanging smithy in his head, Roach had gone, but there was a scrap of paper on the table with an address, a telephone number and the words PLEASE CALL.


	2. Part 2

Of all the destinies Jim could have thought up for himself, this one wouldn't even have made the list: settled in a cottage on the coast, writing fiction he'd never publish under his real name.

It wasn't that secrecy had been an integral part of his life for so long; he simply didn't want to be connected with the sort of fantasies he seemed able to pour forth endlessly and effortlessly. If it had been porn he'd have owned up to it, but not to these bland, cosy whodunnits for which the public appetite seemed insatiable.

Others might have found the location lonely but Jim liked his own company. Seclusion, solitude, and pale sea light were the main advantages of the place. He loved his windswept views over the ever-changing sea. It wasn't only to do with beauty, he realised: if something approached, he'd see it coming.

There was a garden of sorts, partly walled in for protection from the elements, but salt flew in on the breeze and left rust-coloured spots on the greenery. Clematis and climbing roses grew in tangles over the walls and covered most of the small porch, blooming lavishly in pale pink, dark red, purple, white against the white of the cottage.

When George Smiley had come down to visit he'd sat in the dappled shade of the porch nodding off, looking so small and old and frail it had left a chill in the pit of Jim's stomach. For the first time, the notion that life would end had frightened him.

There had been occasions, many of them, when Jim had stared death in the face, and he was astonished to find he was no longer prepared to do so. He had reached middle age and death was no longer an abstraction; sooner or later it would come to claim him and he wasn't prepared to let it just yet. Still, his life was empty and he had no idea how to fill it.

The money from his mother's family and his detective fiction allowed him an easy, pleasant living, but he wasn't sure he'd call it a life. He existed. He made up people he didn't care about who killed each other in a world so fictional it didn't move him, and perhaps that was exactly what his readers wanted. Fireside escapism, unthreatening because it was so far removed from the real world.

When Jim had met Bill Roach in the bar he'd come straight from a meeting with his editor with a healthy advance in his pocket. The next morning he had stared at the note with its urgent entreaty of PLEASE CALL before dropping it in the ashtray and setting a match to it.

Yet another thing he didn't know what to do with. As a spy he had been resourceful, and was a little surprised at his utter ineptitude for ordinary life.

Scattered cumulus clouds were building over the sea; their shadows drifted across the silky, shivering water. There would be rain in the afternoon. Jim sat in a garden chair filling page after page of a notepad with his nearly illegible longhand. For the life of him he couldn't picture his main character, a young man so insipid as to have no features. Another face kept superimposing itself on Jim's thoughts: greenish brown eyes, hair tumbling over the forehead, a beautiful mouth.

When the first raindrop hit the notepad making an _and_ dissolve into a round, indigo spot, Jim went inside and stared at the phone. PLEASE CALL.

Roach answered halfway through the third signal, his voice impossibly young and soft with sleep, and Jim imagined the boy with his hair ruffled, dressed in undershorts and a rumpled white t-shirt, a hand shoved up under the hem to scratch his belly.

"Jumbo," he barked, and could have sworn he heard an intake of breath.

"Sir. Jim." Confusion. "I didn't..." Swallowing loudly, clearing his throat and his thoughts. "I didn't expect you to call. I mean, I'm glad you did. Sorry. I'm not quite awake."

"Enjoying your freedom, eh? Sleeping in? Late evenings, late mornings?"

"Not really, sir." Roach sounded cautious, surprised and unsure what to make of the call. "Well, sleeping in, I suppose. But there's not much... partying, or anything like that. I'm trying to find out where I'm at, I think."

There was the muffled sound of a choked-back yawn. Jim could picture the lustre of young skin in the cloudy light, the Adam's apple moving.

Once upon a time he'd had good reasons for his actions. These days it was all arbitrary, spur of the moment, aimless. He needed to focus on something and Roach interested him; perhaps that was the reason he'd called. Otherwise he couldn't account for it.

"Want some sea air, Jumbo?" he said gruffly. "Care to visit an old man?"

Another intake of breath. "I'd like to, sir. Where? When?"

It was unfathomable to Jim that Roach would want to see him, _why_ Roach would want to see him, even be eager to. The boy had idolised him at Thursgood, but back then he'd only been a lost, immature pre-teen who didn't play too well with other boys, a child craving acceptance and encouragement from an authority figure since his parents gave him none. But this Roach was a university graduate, intelligent and perceptive, no longer in need of idols.

Jim decided not to analyse motives and told Roach the station.

"Call me when you're there and I'll pick you up. Today, tomorrow, next week, whatever suits you."

He tried not to acknowledge the pathetic ring to that.

"This evening, sir?"

"Do I need to remind you that we're not at Thursgood, Jumbo? Give me a ring when you're there, and if you call me sir again I'll leave you at the station to rot in the rain."

Roach laughed at that. "See you tonight."

Jim dropped the receiver back in the cradle and found he was looking forward to having company. Another voice than his own. Unexpected lines. Something to counteract the bland cast of his books.

 

TBC...


End file.
